Watching Dad's Shows After He Was Gone Turned My Couch Into a Séance

When my father died two years ago, we did what most American families do. We divided up the tools, argued politely about the good recliner, and boxed up a lifetime of stuff into banker's boxes labeled in my mother's handwriting.

Nobody told me I'd also be inheriting his streaming queue.

The family room TV still had his profile logged in. Right there at the top: "Continue Watching." And sitting under it, frozen mid-episode, was a Western he'd started the week before he passed. He never got to the end. So one Tuesday night, mostly to avoid doing the dishes, I pressed play.

The Dead Man's Laugh Track

Here's something nobody warns you about: hearing a laugh track when you're grieving is a gut punch you don't see coming. Not because it's sad, but because you can hear him in it. Dad had a specific laugh — a short, wheezy bark that showed up during sitcoms and never during the serious parts. Every time a studio audience cracked up at some joke about a mother-in-law, my brain auto-dubbed in his.

I don't know if that's healthy. I don't care. It was the best company I had that month.

So I made it a project. Not a solemn vigil, nothing like that — I'm not capable of solemn for more than eleven minutes. I just decided I'd work through every show the man loved. The Westerns. The cop procedurals where the gruff detective says "my way or the highway" in every single episode. The game shows he watched at 4 p.m. like it was a church service.

His Taste Was Better Than Mine, Which Stings

I went in expecting a museum of boring. What I got instead was a masterclass.

The man had range. I knew him as a guy who fell asleep in his chair during the news. I did not know he'd watched every episode of a 1970s detective show that's genuinely funnier than half the comedies on my own list. I did not know he'd sampled prestige dramas, old boxing documentaries, and — this one floored me — a cooking competition series. Dad did not cook. Dad's idea of cooking was "burning the hot dogs with confidence." But there it was, forty-one episodes watched.

It's a strange thing, learning your parent had an entire interior life you never got to talk about. We could've argued about the season finale. We could've had opinions at each other. That conversation doesn't exist anymore, so I have it with the couch instead. The couch is a good listener.

The Remote Is a Time Machine

Somewhere around week three, I figured out what this actually was. Every show he loved was made sometime between 1962 and whenever he got too tired to stay up for the 10 o'clock slot. Watching them wasn't about the plots. It was about standing in the room where he stood.

When the theme music hit on his old Western, I was eight years old again, sitting on shag carpet while he hollered at me to bring him the remote — which was, naturally, six inches from his hand. When the game show host did his signature sign-off, I could smell the kitchen. Meatloaf, probably. It was always meatloaf.

Entertainment is the cheapest inheritance there is. Nobody leaves you a house. Everybody leaves you their shows. And unlike the house, the shows don't come with property taxes.

What I'd Tell You to Do

If you've still got a parent around, here's your assignment, and I'm serious about this: ask them what they're watching. Not "how are you," not "did you take your pills," but what show are you into right now. Then watch it. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's bad.

Because someday that viewing history is all that's left, and you'll want the context. You'll want to know why episode 47 of some forgotten procedural made him laugh so hard the neighbors complained.

Me? I finished his Western last month. Sat through the finale, credits rolling, remote in my hand like it was a rosary. Then I did something I'm not embarrassed to admit:

I started it over.

He would've called that a waste of time. Then he would've done the same thing.